Dealing with the Cover-Up
“Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves. They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.”
Genesis 3:7–8
It is not uncommon for some of the more challenging aspects of the Easter Story to get lost in the hope that comes with the Empty Tomb. We strain to focus on the good news of that first Easter, and that is certainly not a bad thing at all. It is true that when God created all the wonderful pieces of the earth, he ended the majestic project by saying, “It is very good.”[1]
That truth that springs from the story of the Garden of Eden is important. God set humankind free but warned that disobedience carried the price of sin and death. All was good and well, but somewhere along the line, Adam and Eve spent too much time with the serpent. They ate, they fell, sin entered, and it all came unraveled. The good turned sour, and despite our Easter hopes, we have to deal with that.
Whenever the above passage is read in church, I usually encounter a member who has to comment, perhaps with a little grin, on that “naked” business. The grin is there, I suppose, to hide the bit of discomfort we may feel thinking about the first humans out there in the Garden without a stitch on. What was going on?
Adam and Eve knew they had done something wrong in the same way a child quickly snaps his hand out of the cookie jar and begins whistling when Mom enters the room. Adam and Eve were dealing with their own guilt by drawing attention away from whom they were created to be (naked, pure, innocent) to whom they had become (red-faced, caught, shamed). God left that curse of covering nakedness as a kind of reminder that we always should be, with his help, working back toward our innocence and nakedness.
Several years ago, I was fortunate to spend some time in Japan. My Japanese was pretty much limited to words like, “Please,” “Thank you,” “Excuse me,” and “Which way to the bathroom?” I have learned that the Japanese have two words to describe how humans present themselves to the world. The first is tatemae or “the part of myself that I let the world see,” and the second is hon ne or “that place on the inside where no one can see.” Philip Yancey suggests that perhaps we need a third word for the secret places that we never make known to anyone. I am suggesting to you that it is that third place that God is trying to get to, open up, heal and make known. God wants more than just the faces we give to the world: God also wants the ones that we try to hide. Yancey confesses,
“In vain I sometimes build barriers to keep God out, stubbornly disregarding the fact that God looks on the heart, penetrating beyond the tatemae and hon ne to where no person can see. As God informed the prophet, Samuel, “The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”[2]
As my mentor, John Stott (d 2011), liked to say, “What happened in the Garden was the first instance of a cover-up.” I wonder what would have happened if, rather than reach for the fig leaves, Adam and Eve had just ‘fessed up, waited in the Garden, and when God returned, admitted, in all their nakedness and shame, what they had done. Surely, in some sense, they would have restored honesty with God about who they were and about how much they needed God, not just when everything was good, but also when things went terribly wrong.
We need that honesty, too. The journey between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday is a good season to lay bare before God what is going on inside. If we strip away the clothes of pretense before God, perhaps even before others, we can be available to one another and, of course, to God.
There is much in today’s world to give others the impression that we are superbly self-sufficient. But often, only we and God know what is going on behind closed doors. When we strip off the outer shell, the clothes if you will, real intimacy and authentic love can take place. Pause. Take some time to be honest with God; do not let him just see your game face, but all your faces. Invite God into not just your public garden, but the private one as well. Let God show you where the weeds are, where new growth is needed, what needs to be pruned, and what needs to be tended. If you do, you will find yourself come Easter morning emerging from whatever tomb you may face today.
A Question to Ponder
What is one thing you are hiding (or think you are hiding) from God right now that really needs to be laid bare before him?
A Prayer
O Lord, I have sinn’d, and the black number swells To such a dismal sum,
That should my stony heart and eyes,
And this whole sinful trunk a flood become, And melt to tears, their drops could not suffice To count my score,
Much less to pay
But thou, my God, hast blood in store, Yet, since the balsam of thy blood, Although it can, will do no good,
Unless the wound be cleans’d in tears before; Thou in whose sweet, but pensive face, Laughter could never steal a place,
Teach but my heart and eyes
To melt away,
And then one drop of balsam will suffice.
Jeremy Taylor, d. 1667
[1] Genesis 1:31
[2] Philip Yancey, “Prayer,” p. 74, cf. I Samuel 16:7.
